Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of uniquely-identifiable, purposed “Things” that are enabled to communicate data pertaining thereto over a wide communication network, whereby the communicated data form a basis for manipulating the operation of the “Things”. The “Thing” in the Internet of Things could virtually be anything that fits into a common purpose thereof. For example, the “Thing” could be a person with a heart rate monitor implant, a farm animal with a biochip transponder, an automobile that has built-in sensors to alert its driver when tire pressure is low, or the like, or any other natural or man-made entity that can be assigned a unique IP address and provided with the ability to transfer data over a communication network. Notably, if all the entities in an IoT are machines, then the IoT is referred to as a “Machine to Machine” (M2M) IoT or simply, as M2M IoT.
It is apparent from the aforementioned examples that an entity becomes a “Thing” of an M2M IoT especially, when the entity is attached with one or more sensors capable of capturing one or more types of data pertaining thereto, segregating the data (if applicable), selectively communicating each segregation of data to one or more fellow “Things”, receiving one or more control commands (or instructions) from one or more fellow “Things”. The control commands are based on the data received by the fellow “Things” and executing the control commands results in the manipulation or management of the operation of the corresponding entity. Therefore, in an IoT-enabled system, the “Things” basically manage themselves without any human intervention, thus drastically improving the efficiency thereof.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,052,216 B2 discusses an energy measurement system which measures electrical parameters, such as, line-to-line voltage/current, line to neutral voltage/current, total apparent power, reactive power, active power, fundamental and harmonic total energy per phase, fundamental and harmonic reactive energy per phase, active energy per harmonic frequency per phase, reactive energy per harmonic frequency per phase, fundamental and harmonic active energy per phase.
WIPO publication WO2014089567A2 tells about automated monitoring of various sensors including sensors that measure power, voltage, current, temperature, and humidity of the power sources as well as notification triggers and alarms to a feature phone.
CN 203588054U describes wireless network sensor monitoring system used in the power environment based on Internet of things.
CN 102539911A discusses smart metering systems, large master system, digital substation and small smart metering sensor through mutual perception by the information and “Internet of Things”.
US Patent publication 20120213098 A1 tells about the use of an internet of things analyzer with the function of measuring voltage, current and resistance as a regular multi-meter.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,447,541 B2 discusses energy monitoring devices that are able to communicate with energy aware appliances comprising of an embedded energy monitor with connected network equipment, such as, a router or hub and a server.
None of the prior art technologies emphasizes on utilizing distributed computing, power factor calculations and use of Big Data technologies to diagnose power quality issues of the power line to reduce the cost of electronics measuring it and offering scalability for a large number of measuring points.
Aforementioned prior art technologies fail to address measurement of electrical parameters that affect power quality of power lines distributed in large numbers and over a large area. An organization with multiple locations around the world with multiple electrical lines to be monitored may be too huge to handle for the aforementioned prior art technologies. The aforementioned prior arts fail to address scale of data, frequency of data, calculation capabilities residing in a single location and so on.
It is evident from the discussion of the aforementioned prior arts that none of them pave way for distributed power line diagnosis. Therefore, there exists a need in the art for a solution to the aforementioned problem.